It’s easy to think that growth is linear when we look at others. We see people getting promotions or publishing amazing articles and tend to think that they’re on an upward track. Or we look at people who have “made it” and imagine their growth being smooth and without the ups and downs that we experience.
I was thinking about it today, and I think it may stem from the typical school timeline. We would start a year, move through the year, complete the year, and move onto the next. Even though the growth each year fluctuated, the pattern remained the same, and we always moved forward.
After 12+ years, the pattern gets ingrained in our head, but as adults, things aren’t broken down into neat little packages that signify growth, so it can be easy to think that it isn’t happening, especially if things have stalled or even moved backwards a bit.
I know this, but it takes on a different meaning when I can actually see it. The picture below is my Substack subscribers (thanks for being here!). There are periods of growth where quite a few people subscribe each day. Then there are days with a few unsubscribes. Sometimes these periods essentially cancel each other out and the graph flattens for a while. Then it picks back up again.
Seeing this graph made me want to see what my income looked like if graphed.
I’ve been a freelance writer for 7 years, and I know that my income has grown, but I also know that it hasn’t been linear or even a little bit smooth.
I started freelancing in 2019, and in December of that year, I had my first $1,000 month. It was the moment when I realized that this could be a real job. From there, my income has continued to go up, but when I graph it out (with the help of ChatGPT) it actually looks pretty crazy.
Overall, my income has trended upward, minus an abysmal April 2025, but it is decidedly not linear.
I think this graph is a metaphor of sorts for every area in life where we want to make progress. It’s probably not going to be a smooth upward line. There’s going to be jagged edges and stutter starts and upward movement. The important thing is to keep going, keep your goals in mind, and don’t get discouraged when things aren’t going exactly how we planned because there’s were we often learn the most important lessons.
Join the TSF Club by becoming a paid subscriber today! You’ll get some awesome stuff — think a fun real life welcome gift (stickers and more!), interviews with other freelancers, webinars, Ask Me Anythings, Coffee Chat co-working sessions, and more. Join today for $5 per month ($50 for the whole year)!
I also just opened up the subscriber chat, so you can chat with me and other freelancers about keeping your business simple (while making money, of course!). I know we all have about a thousand ways to chat with people, so no pressure!
See below for the first TSF Club FLOWN — we’re doing a pitch workshop!!!
FLOWN is a body-doubling and co-working platform that helps increase focus and productivity. You can join drop-in sessions, focus sessions, or community-hosted sessions. It’s a great platform for friendship and focus!
It’s free to join and you get an allotment of sessions that you can join throughout the month (plus free Fridays!). These are the ones I’ll be in this week if you want to see a friendly face (but actually everyone is friendly!):
📅 My FLOWN calendar
Come hang out on FLOWN! Here’s where I’ll be this week!
Wednesday @ 9:00 CST: 1 Hour Focus Session We’ll do a quick chat and then settle into a work session!
Wednesday May 27 @ 10:00 CST: TSF Club Pitch Workshop This is a pitch workshop for TSF Club members! We’ll take turns reading a pitch that we’re getting ready to send out and everyone can offer feedback and suggestions for improvement. I’ll send an invite to TSF Club members Wednesday morning. This is the first one, so I’m excited to see how it works!
📖Reading
I just finished The Lost Bookshop and loved how everything came together in the end. I feel like there were a few holes and some moments where the plot jumped a bit, but overall, it settled right into that magical realism space that I’m loving right now. P.S. Look at how beautiful the deluxe edition is. I really love these!)
I also just started The Magic of Manifesting Money. I definitely believe in the power of the mind to call things to you, and this book shares manifesting strategies and explains things in a way that I’ve never thought of before. Should we do a TSF Club book club???
*As an Amazon Affiliate, I make a small commission on items purchased through my links.
💻Working on
Happy last week of the month! I have quite an article push this week, and I’m excited for the income:
7 MoneyLion articles
3 small business articles
2 articles for The Healthy (one of these will be a Behind the Pitch!)
🤍Loving
Our little town had its annual Memorial Day celebration, and it was really great. The kids are older now and can mostly run around on their own, so I mostly just got to hang out and get a little sunburned. Speaking of manifesting, quick story:
Years ago, I had just met another mom in the area. I was actually hired for her job when she quit teaching to stay home with her kids. We met a few times and got along really well. She was one of those people that I knew I’d be friends with, but we didn’t really have the chance to hang out — mom life.
That year, I knew she had had people over to her house to watch the fireworks in town, and in the back of my head, I thought that it would cool to be good enough friends to do that someday. Fast forward to when I quit to stay home with my kids the next year. We ended up going to the same mom group in another town (it’s a very small area) and became really good friends. We’ve been friends for around 7 years now, and we’ve spent the last few years of fireworks at her house watching them! It always feels very full circle.
🧠 Thinking
This is completely unrelated to writing (which is why I give myself a “thinking” space here), but we’re going to start paying the kids a “salary” of sorts. They really do help out a lot around the house, and paying them for individual jobs is exhausting. I always got an allowance growing up, which I always spent on Taco Bell back when tacos were $0.89, and I think it will help them learn how to manage money and have a little more control over what they buy. I’m always curious about how other people approach money with their kids, so feel free to share!
I want to know all of your over coffee things. You can copy and past the list in the comments and add what you’re:
📖Reading
💻Working on
🤍Loving
🧠 Thinking
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It is SO helpful to see actual data from freelancers!